City remains magnet for foreign investment

Six key sectors

In Shanghai, the NEV industry is just one of six key sectors striving to create complete industrial clusters and build a new industrial system. Information technology, biomedicine, high-end equipment, advanced materials and fashionable consumer goods are also seeking substantial growth in the city to facilitate high-quality economic expansion.

To further optimize the city's industrial planning, in 2018, the Shanghai Municipal Government released an industrial map — the first of its kind in the country — and revised it last year. Early last month, Shanghai announced 24 policies to help attract more investment to the city.

The presence of foreign companies and investment is of great importance to Shanghai's optimized industrial planning. As a result, the local government has held global investment promotion conferences annually since 2020, reaching 850 cooperation agreements and attracting investment of about 1.8 trillion yuan.

Zhang Guohua, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce, said that while the actual use of foreign capital rose by 28.1 percent year-on-year to $7.8 billion during the first quarter of this year in the city, the value of foreign capital reaching high-tech industries rose by 45.9 percent year-on-year.

To date this year, local government officials have met with top executives from 51 multinational companies. The government has also set up special service mechanisms to attract, construct and officially operate foreign-invested projects, Zhang said.

The municipal government's efforts have paid off. Shanghai's accumulative actual use of foreign capital exceeds $330 billion. A total of 907 multinational companies have set up regional headquarters in the city, which is also home to 538 multinationals' regional research and development centers.